Desperate Measures
by DezoPenguin
Summary: The sins of the hunters brought about her death, and Gehrman was never the same. As she sought the nightmare of her own will, so too will Gehrman, Laurence, and their associates seek the dream to stand against the scourge of beasts. But no matter how sympathetic the spirit, the gifts of the Great Ones are never in the form one expects.


_Tick. Tock._

 _"I can't do it any more."_

 _The woman wore a shirtwaist, a corset, a knit shawl over her shoulders and arms, a dark skirt that almost brushed the floor. The skirt's hem was spattered with grave-mud, from when she had helped to lay to rest the fallen. Another of them._

 _Tick. Tock._

 _"I am not helping them."_

 _The floorboards creaked under her boots as she paced, under his as he drew nearer._

 _"I thought to put it all aside."_

 _Her voice was lightly accented, different from the speech of those of this region. From somewhere else, some outland place, despite the ties of blood she had here._

 _He'd never asked. He'd liked the mystery it lent her._

 _Tick. Tock._

 _"I never understood, you know. Never understood how you could just...go on, after all of it."_

 _He cleared his throat. His tongue felt thick, swollen, making it an effort to form words._

 _"The work..." he began. "The work was too important to turn our backs on."_

 _Her eyes brimmed with sorrow._

 _"You think so, truly?"_

 _Tick. Tock._

 _"Laurence...he needs us."_

 _She shook her head sadly, the strands of pale hair that escape her bonnet brushing her cheek._

 _"But do we need him? Or need what he offers?"_

 _He felt on firmer ground here. Indeed, the floorboards creaked once more as he actually shifted his stance, squaring up, posture reflecting philosophy._

 _"You can't deny it. The things we've already accomplished are staggering."_

 _"Staggering, yes. In their horrors."_

 _He shook his head._

 _"The beasts..."_

 _Tick. Tock._

 _"You know why I came here to this place. How you railed at me when I threw away my blade! And yet, it is you who stands there, denying reality even as we are surrounded by the search for what they call 'truth.'"  
_

 _She shook her head sharply._

 _"You were my idol, Gehrman, the perfect hunter. The man who could defeat any foe, no matter how horrific, how monstrous. But so blind to the truth, you are."_

 _He clenched his fists, fingers curled against his palms so tightly that the nails bit into the flesh._

 _"And what truth is that?" he said._

 _"That we are the monsters."_

 _She let it hang there, as if it were bolder, more dramatic than it was. How young she was, he thought, so full of zeal in whatever shaped her will. As a hunter, as his pupil, then as the caretaker of the spire across the garden from where they now stood._

 _Tick. Tock._

 _The hands of the great clock creaked. The dial turned._

 _"I wanted to help them," she said. "None of this, none of what happens here, would have begun without what we did. The suffering of these patients is as much due to what we did as is the suffering we inflicted with our hands. But it means_ nothing _, Gehrman._ Nothing _."_

 _She was turning away from him, then. Walking back the other way, sweeping her skirts aside so that she could seat herself in the elaborately carved wooden chair, almost like a throne. Her back was stiff and erect, her posture proud even in despair, and Gehrman was reminded once more of how she shared a bloodline with the heretic queen Logarius had put down._

 _"You're wrong," he insisted. "You're letting your heart—your conscience—blind you to reality. We need you more than ever, now, after what has happened."_

 _"The hunters," she said. "Yes, I have heard. The disappearances. News has reached me, even in this place."_

 _Tick. Tock._

 _She reached towards the occasional table at her side and picked up a silver goblet. He got a glimpse of its contents, of a strange, glimmering fluid, before she brought the goblet to her lips._

 _"It is a curse on the blood-drunk, is it not? On those who run mad like beasts. They no longer see the world through human eyes, and so they pay the price."_

 _Her eyes met his, a cold storm._

 _"_ As they should. _"_

 _She downed the goblet's contents in one gulp, then smashed the chalice back down onto the table. The sharp sound of cracking glass startled them both. She'd broken the glass in the frame of a small picture._

 _"You can't mean that."_

 _"And what would be your way? To put them down like beasts?"_

 _"Better than than an endless curse."_

 _"Then you, too, know what the curse is."_

 _Slowly, shakily, he nodded._

 _"I feel it too, here," she said, pressing her fist to her chest, over her heart. "They want us to know._ She _wants us to know, for what we did to her children."_

 _Tick. Tock._

 _The hands of the great clock turned again._

 _"But I shall watch over them, Gehrman. Perhaps I could do nothing here, but I will protect_ their _secret to the last. After all, I took the rest of it from them."_

 _Lightning flared behind the clock face, setting each circle alight. The dial turned once more. The hands pointed, settled._

 _First, a word he did not recognize._

 _Then,_ Hunter _._

Beast.

Sea.

 _He understood._

 _"No!"_

 _His youth was behind him. He had matured into his middle years without restraint. But he was still fast._

 _Just not fast enough._

 _The knife swept across the long, sleek column of her throat. For an instant it was as if nothing had happened—but then the flesh parted, blood pouring forth, far too much blood for any ministration to restore._

 _The bell began to chime._

 _The dial settled, the openings lining up to form a passage. Wind howled through the gap, snuffling a hundred candles in an instant._

 _For a moment, despite the darkness—or because of it—he thought he saw her seated, not as she was, but as he had known her, sleek in green and gray, her lost blade in its sheath across her lap. Just for an instant, so briefly that it could have been but a trick of the mind._

 _But he didn't think it had been._

 _Gehrman dropped to his knees, lifted his face to the heavens, and let out a long, wailing cry of anguish. Even then, though, he had no way of knowing whether he wept for himself, or for Maria._

~X X X~

The plain wooden stairs that spiraled down the outer rim of the tower creaked beneath the shoes of the four men. Above them were stone floors, rooms put to practical use, but this segment of the tower had been left undeveloped, just a plain shaft connecting its upper reaches to the ground levels below. It was dark as pitch, and the torches held by the two hunters guttered and crackled, flames flickering as if tossed by strange winds blown from unseen places.

"I'm still not sure of the wisdom of this," said one of the hunters. Gehrman didn't know him very well; he was a morose, bearded man named Brador, slightly built and stealthy of foot. Even though he'd been in service to the Healing Church for several months now, he still wore garb that broadcast his foreign origins.

So many of the remaining hunters _were_ foreigners, now. They came to Yharnam for many reasons, but whatever the cause there was something about them that guided them to the hunter's path. Few Yharnamites, by contrast, had that fire, that _something_ in the blood. When the old hunters had vanished, Ludwig had tried to rally the populace, equipping them with sturdy garb and weapons, but they were at best effective only in a mob, and at worst they were mere prey for beasts.

It was, it seemed, the techniques of the Workshop, the use of blood to enhance weapons and flesh even more than the training or the tactics, that made a hunter.

There were so few of them left now, that had escaped the jaws of the beasts—or the jaws of the nightmare.

 _The nightmare claims us all, in one way or another_ , he thought.

The man just in front of Gehrman chuckled.

"Wisdom? What does wisdom mean? This is an opportunity to be grasped!"

His appearance was as eccentric as his work. He wore the uniform of a Byrgenwerth student, even though he could rightly call himself a professor of that institution had he so wished. Eccentric or not, Micolash was a definite genius; the things he'd discovered had rewritten the understanding of what it meant to be human. His group had done more with the things they'd learned from the relics of Kos than the voices in the heights above, Gehrman was sure.

Or maybe that was just the old hunter's conscience, trying to persuade him.

"Opportunity?" was all he said.

Micolash seemed to miss the scorn in his voice—or was just so earnest in his purpose that he didn't care.

"Think of it! No one has ever done this before! To reach out to the Great Ones of the dream! With this, we shall _open_ our eyes at last! Communion with those beyond us!"

"The sacrament of blood will be upheld," said the last of the four. He was tall and lean, the torches burnishing his pale hair with the richness of copper. "It is the holy medium that guides us. The scourge of the beast _must not_ be allowed to turn us from our path."

"I wonder what Master Willem would say to hear you talk like that, Laurence."

Laurence paused on the stairs and turned back to look at Micolash. His cheekbones were hard and sharp, as hard as the gaze in his eyes, the cold intractability of a fanatic. Yet that chill, Gehrman knew, could melt in an instant to show a father's kindness.

That was the difference between the two men, the old hunter decided. They shared the same consuming passion as their master, Provost Willem. They were dedicated to the cause of humanity's evolution, the necessity of reaching beyond the limits of mind and body to grasp the Truth the revelation of the Great Ones had opened to them. But where Micolash's passion was one of the mind, an all-consuming puzzle to unlock, Laurence's was of the heart, the emotions, the sense of transcendence that he sought.

Gehrman could not miss the sardonic quirk of his lips that came with the stray thought that it was appropriate Laurence favored so much the medium of _blood_.

"Master Willem is a greater man than any of us," Laurence said. "His wisdom has led us to everything we have found, everything we have achieved. If he disagrees with my methods, it is only out of an abundance of caution and a distrust of the human weaknesses we all possess."

Micolash's lip quivered, as if he meant to say something, but he held his peace under the intense scrutiny of the Vicar. Gehrman wondered if it was the force of Laurence's personality, his will, that made the scholar fall quiet—or if it was the opportunity for discovery that he did not want to miss.

Gehrman also found that he could not have cared less.

Laurence, though, seemed to pronounce himself satisfied, because he nodded once, turned, and continued down the rickety stairs.

"The plain truth is that today we do as the need drives us," he resumed. "We act because we have no choice. In striving to be greater than we are made, we slip and fall. There are many traps for the unwary. Even as the Old Blood satiates us, soothes our fears of the unknown path before us, so too does it beckon in the wrong directions. Too many forget our wise adage, to fear the thirst for blood, and succumb to beastly idiocy. We sought to tame the beast with the words of the Great Ones, but we failed. Only eradication can spare us."

"And yet the hunt exacts its price," Gehrman said.

"Yes," Micolash agreed. "The will of the Great Ones is not to be crossed without understanding the consequences."

They had reached the landing, the only one between the causeway from Oedon Chapel above and the base of the tower. Above them, at the tower's peak, were the rooms where the Church had helped expand the hunters' purview, where Ludwig and others practiced their arts. Here, though, was the original source, the place where the Hunt had first begun.

Laurence thrust the doors open and the four of them walked out into the moon-drenched garden.

"What is this place?" Brador asked. He looked around himself with eyes that took in everything. The full, swollen moon was so bright above them that the torches actually inhibited vision by disturbing the level of light.

"The Workshop," Gehrman said. "The birthplace of the Hunt. When the scourge began to show itself, Master Willem and Laurence called upon me to fight it. I selected my apprentices, and we fought in the shadows. The Workshop grew with the city, gained stronger support from the Church, formed factions...but this place was its heart. It was our chapel for our communion with the tools of the Hunt, and our graveyard, where we lay when one of us fell."

His voice cracked at the end of his speech. he hoped they—Micolash and Brador, at the least—took it for the weakening throat of an old man.

They followed the path as it curved up and past the gravestones. Gehrman kept from turning his head, but he could not help but flick his eyes to the left, where a small chest sat, then turned his gaze upwards from there to the gravestone atop the little rise, standing by itself next to the building.

He felt his heart throb.

He had laid her to rest himself, taken her from the Choir's hall and damned any who would stop him. Not that any tried; they knew him too well for that, either for his own sake or for his friendship with their Vicar. He had buried her as she had chosen to die, as a Hunter, replaced the gentle garb of a helpmate and caretaker with the sturdy elegance of a slayer of beasts.

 _What would old Logarius have said, had he known I was honoring her in the mode of Cainhurst?_

The door to the Workshop was closed; Laurence stood aside so Gehrman could place the old iron key into the lock and twist it. The metal grated, rusty from a year's disuse, but the bolt was drawn back and Gehrman pushed the door open. Torchlight fell across cabinets, storage boxes, disordered stacks of books, the workbench and tools...and the doll.

She sat there, sprawled against one wall on the raised dais next to the back door. Brador hadn't known her, but Laurence had, and Micolash. The Vicar had of course seen the doll before as well, but Micolash had not, and he flinched in place.

"I thought—" He then recognized what he was seeing, the articulation in the fingers, the tiny crack in the porcelain face nearly hidden by her hair. "Ahh, of course—"

"We mourn all those who gave their lives for our sake," Laurence prevented him from saying more. "Their sacrifices were part of what made our path, just as one day our own may serve those who come after us."

He did not look at Gehrman. Between the two of them, there was nothing more to be said about this. Instead, he turned to Micolash.

"Put it on the table."

At first, Micolash seemed to think Laurence meant the doll, even took half a step towards her. Then, his rational mind took over, and the obvious meaning came to him. He approached the altar and set the bulky leather doctor's bag he carried on the floor. Micolash snapped back the brass clasps, opened the bag, and took out a large, cylindrical specimen bottle. Ordinarily, such a vessel would be used to contain eyes, organs, or dissected flesh in a preservative solution, but this one was different. There was no need for a preserving agent; what it contained would never decay.

It was a cord of flesh, thick and withered. It had mummified strangely, so that it felt different to the touch, at once dry and yet firm and springy. All along its length were studded dark, oblong depressions vaguely reminiscent of eyes, perhaps why Provost Willem had dubbed it the Cord of the Eye. Micolash had brought it from Byrgenwerth's laboratories, and he placed it on the altar with something approaching reverence.

Gehrman knew all too well the source of the cord's strange properties. Had he not been the one to bring it back to Willem from that barnacle-encrusted hamlet on the coast? The sight of it brought it all back to him: the shrill cries that might have been fear or might have been hate, the way steel sang as it sliced through flesh, the fluid that ran like blood but was not (or was it)?

The screams of the dying.

Had they killed it, there at the last? Killed the Great One from whom they had torn this thing? Or had it been dead all along, as dead as its child? Did the question even mean anything? What was "alive" or "dead" to those beings? Did they dream, and in so doing, live? Or were their dreams death and nothing more?

The torchlight was splashing strange, crazed shadows around the room, and he realized that his hands were shaking, causing the flame to tremble.

Flame. Oh, there had been fire, too, fire to cleanse and purify, to hide what they had done. Sea-sodden wood and tortured flesh set alight, and with enough heat even blood would burn. But they still dreamed of it, that wretched place.

Or it dreamed of them, and when they matched their image in the dreams, then they became one with it.

The reverie had so consumed him (and what were memories but a waking dream?) that Gehrman had missed the start of the invocation. Laurence and Micolash extended their hands to the cord, palms flat over it, and they were chanting. Their words were in many tongues, the language of Yharnam and of foreign lands, words that had been carved into the walls of broken tombs and etched into massive grave-obelisks.

Words that were not words at all, but emanations, things Gehrman could only "hear" as images in his mind. Images graven by Caryll, images that ticked past on the great clock far above them that tolled the propitious hour.

Brador fell to his knees, trembling as with an ague. He was young to the Hunt, still, too young to know its ways. He clutched at his head as words drifted through the air, as they hammered at the aether and made the fabric of the air tremble.

The hands of the great clock turned, and Gehrman dreamed of them falling into place.

 _Communion._

 _Moon._

Silver light poured through the walls, through the roof, drowning the feeble fires of the torches.

No, not silver, the silver was breaking, crumbling away, pieces falling away to show the deeper light, the paleblood light, and four men dreamed that they stood in a field of shining flowers that stretched their necks up to receive the darkling radiance.

And _It_ descended to them, descended between great pillars that stretched high as if to hold up the entire world, descended through the sea of Gehrman's nightmares. _Its_ mane writhed like serpents, and eyes like black pools with unknowable depths took the measure of four souls.

Then _It_ said one word.

 _Hunter._

Gehrman screamed, clawing at his temples as the word etched itself into his brain, marking him, as _It_ reached for him with _Its_ great claws, lifting him up to _Its_ face.

They had asked for an answer to the scourge, and _It_ would give them what they had asked for. _It_ would give them the Hunt.

"And it shall be made in your image, for are you not the first Hunter?"

A woman's voice, speaking plainly, with a faint lilt in her speech. From some outland place, despite the ties of blood that she had to this place.

"Maria?"

No.

Cool, sculpted hands assisted him to his feet. _Foot_ , for the right one burned like fire, shuddered as it was crushed, a shackle binding him, as if he needed any other sign.

 _It_ was gone, and yet _It_ was there, filling the sky above with its pale light.

"Let me see to your comfort," the doll told him, and she assisted him to mount the curving stairs, to pass into the chapel-like building. A crackling fire danced cheerily in the hearth, and warm lamplight played over furnishings that sparkled with polish, new and ready to use. She helped him settle into a wheeled bath-chair, its frame creaking as he settled into it.

"Who...are you?"

"I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you," she said in _her_ voice, the painted glass eyes Gehrman had crafted and set into place showing nothing.

 _Ah, why must she speak in that voice?_

But she'd already told him, hadn't she? This dream was made in his image, as he had crafted the doll in hers.

"A hunter's dream," he said.

 _It_ had given them the Hunt, just as Laurence had hoped for. _It_ offered shelter to those chosen to end the scourge, so that they could be what even the Holy Blades of the Church could not.

"A hunter's dream," he repeated, "but without a hunter."

"They will come," the doll said.

Yes, he thought, they would come, and they would dream of the Hunt, and they would wake. But he would not, for the dream had chosen him.

Or perhaps, like Maria, he had chosen it.

~X X X~

 _A/N: Some of the lore concepts I used in this story, specifically as they relate to Maria's role as hunter and caretaker in the Research Hall and how her consciousness is reflected in the Doll and the Winter Lanterns, have been adapted from those presented by Jerks Sans Frontieres in his video "Bloodborne Up Close 07: Laurence & The Doll (Return to the Hunter's Dream)." I highly recommend any of his videos if you're interested in _Bloodborne _lore; they contain some first-rate analysis without falling into wilder flights of fancy._


End file.
